


Guided By Perdition

by HarlequinForest



Category: Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:01:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarlequinForest/pseuds/HarlequinForest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan and Martha Kent leave Smallville for Gotham City--A midnight shooting causes Jonathan Kent to conquer his terror and become The Batman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guided By Perdition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wellisntthatshiny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellisntthatshiny/gifts).



I.

Before he’d become The Bat, before the murder that awakened in him the need to become The Bat, Alfred was his closest friend. Late nights by the glowing, yawning lamplight, trying to determine who had struck, and when and where they’d strike again, Alfred would poke his head through the doorway, and look at him sheepishly. The question hung in the air: “Burning the candle at both ends again, Master?”

Alfred couldn’t ask his question, of course, but there he’d stand, poking his nose through the door, as if there was a chance in the world Jonathan Kent would tear himself away from his work.   
Kent waved his old friend away without turning from his maps and his records. 

“Not tonight Alfred, you know how things are.” 

Alfred waited by the doorway, resolute and cross, in that English way of his. When it was clear that murder and conspiracy would again take precedence, Alfred huffed a little, turned and left Kent to his work. He’d never gotten Kent to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but if this little wordless game would express Alfred’s annoyed, playful worry, it was worth playing.

Kent swiveled in his chair, side to side. He numbly, blankly, let his eyes trail over the clippings in front of him. The mild-mannered Jonathan Kent always had a thing for newspapers. He loved the way they always smelled older than they were, like they had the age to go with all the stories they held. He loved the way that through the whole of the year, all the passerby would swap from earth tones, to spring tones, and in a rush and a flurry, back to earth again, and the leaves would fall from the trees and the sun would rise later and later, then all of a sudden, sooner and sooner, and through all of this inconsistency, his newspaper would come, black, and grey, and white, every day. 

His eyes settled on the piece he couldn’t bring himself to throw away.

“Rat With Wings: Gotham’s Criminal Underbelly—Upgraded” 

He rubbed his weary eyes. They’d spent far too long stumbling over false clues. Far too long looking after everyone else. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop working. He couldn’t do a thing to make himself any happier, but maybe he could apologize to his best friend. 

“Alfred, can you come in here, please?” 

Kent always imagined Alfred calling him master, but he prided himself on talking to Alfred like he would anyone else. 

Kent sat in silence for a moment, concerned he had scorned his friend one too many times, but Alfred padded his way back into the room, as constant and supportive as ever. He came to stand behind Kent, and Kent swiveled all the way around to greet his wrinkled aide.

A glance told Kent that he had nothing to worry about—Alfred sat down on his haunches with one of Kent’s slippers still hanging from his jowlsy grin. 

“Thanks for taking care of me Alfred. Sincerely, my fine sir, thank you.” 

Kent leaned forward and rubbed at the scruff of Alfred’s neck, looking into that adorable, wretched, droopy face of his. 

“Listen Alfred, I know I’m the one who’s been up all night, but, buddy, you’re the one who could use some beauty sleep.” 

It was a dumb joke, but Alfred wasn’t really in a place to argue. Kent had been landing solid blows on rapists and extorters, criminals with mental disorders, and all sorts of crooks and thugs. If Kent was going to knock them out, he was allowed to miss a punch line every now and then. Alfred was a good dog.

Kent let his fingers wander behind Alfred’s left ear. The moment he left his work his sleepless delirium gently whisked him away; the dim light made him nostalgic.

Kent’s favorite memory of Alfred wasn’t quite a memory of Alfred: his Alfred was not the focus of this memory, but the fulcrum.   
\---  
“It’s alright, I’m sorry, Alfred is just so darn friendly sometimes.”

“It’s alright, I love dogs more than most. Alfred? Why you’re quite the little gentleman, aren’t you? I hope you fix your master here a good cup of tea every now and then”

“Aren’t the tea-jokes a little tired? He’s an English bulldog, sure, but he’s Smallville through and through.”

“And what about you?”

She rubbed Alfred’s tummy like she was thanking him for an excuse to speak to me. If the worst thing around is unrequited love, than I’d like to submit that the best thing around is mutual attraction. I’d learned as a younger man that women speak in fine print: that you could take their words at face value and be left heartbroken—ruined by a two-faced woman. I loved her in that instant because she looked at me and smiled as if she was unopposed to going for a walk, to letting me walk her home, to seeing her again. She never wasted a second of my time. She never wore a mask.

And what would she think of me now? 

“What about me?”

“Your pup here Alfred is Smallville through and through. What about you?”

“I think so. Lived here my whole life, loved it my whole life. You?”

“You’ve got the first part right. You lost me with that second part. God’s got a good sense of humor naming this cute corner of no-where Smallville. Like you’d read in a book.”

Goddamnit she would speak to me, not like I was an idiot, or like she was smarter than me, just like she was brilliant, she was goddamn brilliant. The sort of brilliance that compels you to reexamine every thread of your being, deem it unworthy, and drive you to become, not the man of her dreams, but the person of your own. 

“Well, things must happen here every now and then. I get a paper a half-inch thick every morning, and they aren’t all the funnies. I’ve checked.”

Martha Clark had the super-human ability to make me reveal my most embarrassing personal interests in the form of awful jokes. Apparently, she was resistant to them. Or perhaps, it was my luck that her one weakness was self-consciousness in English bulldog owners. 

“If a lady wants to go see a show, and I mean a real show, not some bit at the cinema, where’s she to go in Smallville?”

“Well, no, Smallville isn’t the place for, not the place for theater…”

“Then I’m inclined to say it’s not the place for me. Not an awful place, by any stretch, but not the place for me.”

\---

Kent would sit and reminisce for minutes. The high invited by his lack of sleep had already brought a sort of trance upon him. This insomnia convinced him, night after night, that he was doing right by his dead wife. That his dead wife would have wanted him to dress up as a bat and foil the work of criminals. The demons that rattled from within, banged against his skull, night after night, compelling Jonathan Kent to become a costumed vigilante. He was told by his own addled mind that sleep was a luxury he could no longer afford, that he needed to protect the city that had murdered his wife for the pearls on her neck. If bullets did not kill him, in their erratic, disinterested way, or a fall from a rooftop did not end him quickly and wordlessly, or something so personal and primeval as a knife did not set his body to rotting—his lunacy surely would.

His horrors were merciful this night. They let him doze in his chair with his slippers at his feet, his dog by his side, as memories of his love rioted clumsily behind his eyelids, sustaining his descent.

 

II.

Jonathan Kent slept in his chair. He did not have the will to drag himself to bed to get a good night’s sleep, but he was not able to soldier through the night. He was the most relatable hero—the one that, on occasion, does nothing right. 

He dreamt of the day that would produce in him the knowledge of fear required to devour it, and become it. 

\---

“It’s not a big deal. Who ever moves in next will just get rid of them. Heck, they blend in with the musty old place so well, there’s half a chance no one’ll even notice them.”

So far so good. I’m just as bad a liar as always.

“No, it’s not-‘not a big deal.’ Why have you been saving those newspapers, Jonathan?”

“Because, well, because I like to keep a memory of things. My memory sometimes isn’t good—“

“Jon, please.”

“—And I like to keep a history of the crimes committed in Smallville . . . play detective from the table while I eat my toast…”

“Jon, you put those newspapers in that shed because you care about them. And you can tell me it’s because you want to be able to remember life here, or because you fancy yourself a detective, whatever you say Jon, I don’t think it’s silly. Jon.”

I didn’t look at her at first. I want to look at her immediately, here, in the dream. But that’s not how it happened, so that’s not what I’m allowed to do.

“Jon, look at me.”

I do.

“Would you rather I go get them, Jon?”

“No! No, you don’t have to, I can get them, I can bring them in.”

“They’ve been there for months Jon, and you’ve stopped putting new ones there, in the shed. They’re pilling up around us.”

“I know, Martha, I’m sorry about the clutter, but--“

“They’re just bats, Jon. They won’t bite you. They’ll be more afraid of you then you are of them. They’ll be sleeping if you go right now, they won’t be active.”

“’Active…’ Martha, telling me I’m going to get disturb their snooze is no extra encouragement.”

She smiles. I smile, as I’m supposed to. She loved my sense of humor and I will not take that away from her here. I’ve conquered my fear of bats. I’ve conquered my fear of fear. But I do not think Martha would love the man I’ve become. So, here, in our little theatrical reimagining of Then, I will be the man I was.

She paused for a second, and looked out the window. She calls for Alfred, who trots his way into the room: younger, thinner, and with a greater distance between floor and jowls.

“Alfred, you’re coming with us.”

And so we go outside. The dream has blurred everything save Martha, Alfred, and the shed from my view. I know that the neighbors must be out there, that the street where the kids would play, and shout, and skin their knees is somewhere beyond the trees, but I can only see what I need to see.

We’re at the shed. She looks at me with the sort of gentle pity that only someone who is truly loved can experience.

“Would you come in with me please, Jon?”

Though I know I am merely walked through the steps that my former self took, I can smell the fear I used to breed. 

“Martha, this is dumb, I can just start a new—“

I am numbly aware that I am terrified, but it is not my place to go into that shed. It is not my job to be the hero here.

“Jon, there’s nothing to be afraid of, they’re only bats, they won’t hurt you.”

I lie to her. I lie to the woman I love, because I am supposed to.

“No, Martha, I’m not afraid of bats, I’m not, just leave it alone.”

 

I am shouting at her in defense. A loud man could not be a timid man. It figures.

“Jon, you are, don’t be ridiculous—“

The moment I have been dreading arrives. The moment where I must turn my back on her. It has been so nice to see her, to hear her. I could open the door myself, now. I am no longer afraid of bats. But I need her 

to be the hero here. She always helped me, fought away my depression, battled my demons. I will not take that away from her.

I turn my back to her. I begin to walk back to the house. I know where each step will fall. My blocking is perfect. She would be proud. 

She pulls the shed open. I hear the hinges groan, and I turn. I was not man enough to be the hero myself, and conquer my own fears, but I would always support Martha in struggling against them herself.   
The door opens, and a flapping, chittering night sky is loosed upon us. They pour out of the six inch wide gap, crawling over one another in the air, desperate to see the world with their shriveled, un-ripened   
faces. 

Martha screams. I scream. The cloud of vein-winged plague screams its own triumphant, vile shriek, and in the mingling between the three, I imagine the devil, breathing in the life he needs to let loose hell on earth. 

The wind rustles in his brimstone nostrils; he inhales; a man and woman wail in terror, his brood screams in delight, and he is alive.  
\---  
I am awake. 

 

III.

The sweat poured from Jonathan Kent’s brow; he nearly vaulted himself from his chair and dashed his companion in the process. He had felt no fear in his dream, no real threat of danger, yet as he awakes, he   
finds himself repulsed with his feelings. He grips his at his heart and thinks to himself:

“So I am still a man. This city needs more.” 

And he is back to work. He slept for twenty minutes.

\---

Jonathan Kent and his wife Martha Kent moved from Smallville to the booming metropolis of Gotham City. Jonathan was hesitant through the whole of the process, but he recognized his wife’s passion, and followed it. He wanted to conquer his fear, and he needed his wife to help him. His fear of bats, his fear of the dark, his fear of heights, his fear of the city. She promised she would help him fight those fears, only so long as he wanted to. He always, eventually, said yes. 

They lived in Gotham for a month or so when Jonathan surprised Martha with tickets to a show. He didn’t know the show, but he’d heard good things. Perhaps just as much as he wanted to reward Martha with the trip to a real show she’d hinted at years before, Jonathan Kent wanted to show his wife that he was trying. Gotham scared him every day. He saw drugdealers at every corner and assumed the worst from anyone who lingered in any place for too long. He still struggled, sometimes even coming from the steel mill.

The tickets were for a show at ten at night. The show wouldn’t end until midnight had come and gone. New York City is the city that never sleeps. Gotham City, to Jonathan Kent, is the city that sleepwalks with   
murderous intent. 

These tickets would show Martha that he was trying. That he wanted to stay in the city. They were a lovely gift. Martha yelped with joy when she saw them brimming suggestively from her husband’s shirt pocket. She hopped on her tip toes, kissed his right cheek, and promised him a show of his own later that night. She left his company to put on something nicer, and Jonathan Kent stood, enormously proud of himself.   
Shortly after one A.M. the next morning, the city of Gotham would get up from bed, fail to shake its self awake, point a gun at Jonathan and Martha Kent, demand Martha’s jewelry, and at her delay, the city of Gotham would shoot her dead, and run away into the yellow night.

\---

Jonathan Kent became The Batman to fulfill the wishes of his wife, and to avenge her death. Martha Kent believed in Gotham City—in its potential for great art and its capacity for human experience. Jonathan Kent became The Batman so that he could build a city where those ideas were reality. Martha Kent wanted Jonathan Kent to conquer his fears. He became The Bat, he became his fear, knowing how terror can paralyze the heart. Jonthan Kent became fear, so that he could strike the hearts of sinners cold. 

He refused to be human—the human Kent held his wife as she wheezed her last saccharine breaths. The human Kent allows his fears to stomp their heels into his temples. The human Kent is pressed into the grime. The human Kent is home by dark. 

The inhuman Kent, The Batman, is the dark.

\---

The Batman does not allow him this memory anymore. In the days after his wife’s murder, it was all he could think of. While he still wanted to be Jonathan Kent, he was tormented. The Batman has not forgotten the   
scene I will soon relate to you. He knows exactly where it sits, in his mind. He knows which aisle to go down, which shelf to peer into. He has it logged appropriately. Yet he never visits. 

\---

Martha Kent had put on her dress. She looked miraculous. In that dress, she put the faith of God into even the blackest of heathens. No image such as hers, in that dress, happens by accident. Evidence of Intelligent, perhaps even Smutty, Design. 

And she wore around her neck a string of pearls.

She stood before her husband, who was looking at her and surmising that there was a 60-40 chance that God existed. She did a little twirl, cute, not gaudy, and just slow enough. Jonathan Kent adjusted his estimate to 75-25. 

He fiddled with his tie nervously, trying to mask the fact that he was concerned about the night. Martha, always the empath, grasped for his hand and pressed in against her stomach. A small, yet rapidly expanding smile sprouted on her husband’s face.

She spoke to him, never more in love with him than in this moment:

“I know I don’t need to tell you this, but the ol’ steel plant has a new ad campaign.”

“Oh?”

Jonathan Kent feigned disinterest, which, for some reason, he a recognized and well-respected flirtation maneuver. 

“Yes, silly,”

She let go of her husband’s hand and reached for the paper, still on the table beside them. She began flipping through the pages, slowly, dotingly, as if there was no greater purpose in life than standing there,   
flipping the dry pages of the Daily Planet back and forth.

Jonathan Kent’s hand remained on Martha’s stomach. Martha found the page she’d been looking for. She began speaking, then paused in the middle of her thought.

“So, get a look at this. I’m thinking this might just be the thing for, let’s see, how about ‘ Richard?’ Follow in his daddies’ footsteps?”

The ad lay heroically on the page with contrasting colors and sharp edges. It took up an entire page, yet demanded even more space.

“Martha, we can’t name our kid Richard. The kids at school won’t do anything but tease him.”

Martha giggled. Love is at its finest when lewd jokes still amuse.

“Fine, you’re right. It’s so easy to criticize, sir, do you have any ideas?”

“Well, you know I think it’s silly that you had to take my last name in the marriage. I understand custom and all—but you aren’t any less “you” now that you’re married to me--”

“Ever the gallant” 

She stepped closer to her husband and wrapped her right arm up around his shoulder. She was just tall enough to rest her chin there, when she wanted to, but she didn’t now. 

“So I was thinking—Clark works as a lovely first name, doesn’t it?”

She smiled all at once, thinking it perfect. She needed to try it out aloud, just to be sure.

“Clark Kent. It’s perfect.” 

She hopped on her tip-toes and kissed his right cheek.

“But you’ve neglected the real question here, Jon, get a look at this.”

Jon nuzzled his wife’s head for a moment, enjoying the way he’s make a bit of a mess of it, only so that he could smooth it out later. Martha never would mind, she loved it every single time. 

“Well, I can take a look.”

The advertisement for the steel mill took up an entire page. Unlike an ordinary ad, one where words would do most of the heavy lifting, that job was instead tasked to the figure occupying the majority of the image. A man of super-human proportions stood. He wore workpants, a work jacket, and a shirt underneath. He carried, on his shoulder, a steel girder that stretched into the foreground and the background. The   
girder was obviously too heavy for any human to carry, but this stylized figure held it with ease. 

The text above the impossible figure read “Join Atlantic Smelting,”

The figure’s shirt bore a large, diamond shaped insignia: the letter “S.”

The text below read “Become a Man-Of-Steel!”

The last night they shared together, Jonathan and Martha Kent stood together next to this cartoonish image.

Jonathan Kent bent forward just a little bit, knowing his wife would follow his lead. She fulfilled his expectation; leaning back just a little bit, tilting her head up just a little bit. Jonathan Kent pressed a kiss against her forehead. 

“I suppose it’d be fine. I wouldn’t mind if little Clark Kent grew up to be one of these super-steel-heaving-men.”

Martha Kent leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed Jonathan Kent on his right cheek for the last time. She stared intently into Jonathan’s eyes, then a wise grin spread itself upon her face. Jonathan knew earlier in his life, this smile would have made his knees buckle and the tips of his ears go pink. Now he just knew to wait for the love of his life to explain what she had schemed up.

“That’d be swell, if little Clark decided he wanted to be like his father, wanted to be like the picture in the Daily Planet.”

She tapped the image on the newspaper.

“But I think we’d both be happier to see him write for the Daily Planet.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work was intended as a gift for a startlingly compassionate, brilliant, and loving woman. She suggested I make an account here and post it. I've never written a fan fiction before this, though this was enormously fun to play through. I'd appreciate feedback, if you're in the mood to let me know how you feel I did. 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for your time.


End file.
